Mara And The Two Moons
by RMSmith0519
Summary: Grounded on her little planet of Trikkan, Mara Gravian didn't look beyond her own horizon for satisfaction. When the events of TFA push the First Order to her doorstep, her safe and predictable world is turned upside down, sending her tumbling towards adventure-and new love. Rated M for thematic violence and suggestive adult content.
1. Chapter 1

There's a spot on the hills near our compound where you can watch the two moons rising over Trikkan and our nearby star slipping under the cover of the horizon. There is always a brief and beautiful moment when all three are in a sort of sweeping line, and the sky goes all purple as our star reflects off of the lakes on Targon 6 and 7. It's the place I go to and the moment that I wait for when life becomes a lonely thing, when all the love and warmth I feel falls flat and I need to be alone to understand I'm not. There's me, and the Targon moons, and our star. And there is a purple sky that promises a warm night and a warmer day.

This is the story of a purple sky and three bodies passing through space.

Purple is the color of Jess's eyes. When he's serious, they look as dark and dangerous as twilight in the lowlands. When he's happy, they light up like the auroras on Targon 7. They were the first thing I noticed when we were children, dodging around the fields between our homesteads and playing pretend. If he cheated in a game that we'd completely made up, I made his purple eyes black. He never hit me back. He'd try to trip me and always fail. I used to think that I was faster than him; now I'm sure he was always ahead of me.

He turns from his post by the heater as I enter our home and his eyes flicker with warmth. "The lady of the hills returns," he laughs.

"Says the pilot." I roll my eyes and head for the kitchen, heaving the bag of crops from our hillside garden onto the table. I'd read once that altitude changed crop growth and taste, and I'm curious to try our first yield.

I feel him enter the kitchen behind me, his breath warm in my hair as he slides his sturdy hands from my shoulders to my busy hands. I struggle to focus on what I'm doing as he begins to kiss my neck.

"Jess Gravian," I sigh, "I'll never finish dinner if you keep that up."

His lips trace the shape of my neck and he gently tugs the sleeve of my grey tunic away from its place on my shoulder. This makes me shudder. My hands go limp on the counter and I can feel him fumbling at the toggles on my tunic. One is undone in a matter of seconds but it feels like years as he slips a hand underneath the worn fabric and begins to circle my breast with his finger, slowly, softly. My whole body shakes and I lean into him as his kisses become more bite-like and intense. Before I know it, we've become a dizzying tangle of soil-covered skin and half-shed clothes, Jess thrusting himself into the warm, willing place I keep for him alone as I balance on the edge of our table.

We take our dinner plates in our laps that night, dressed once again and huddled close on a rug by the heater as the spring rains of Trikkan pour over the darkened fields outside. We're almost silent, but for a few low chuckles as our eyes go from our food, which is surprisingly delicious, to one another.

"Two years since we paired, and you still blush after I've been inside you." Jess shakes his head and licks his fingers clean of the last traces of his meal.

"I think I'd been so used to loving you from afar that the thought of being so close to you now is scandalous," I reply after some thought. We talk more about the way we went from being childhood playmates to gawking teenagers, afraid of each other's shadows. Jess's playful banter and my sudden shyness. The circumstances that made us realize our lives and deaths were for each other.

The rain quiets as we steal into bed, warm in our homestead, a simple hut submerged in the soil of Trikkan. We face one another and our noses almost touch as our low voices plan the days ahead of us.

"Tomorrow's the race," I whisper. "Are you nervous?"

Jess laughs lightly, and his violet eyes light up even in darkness. "For what? I have nothing to lose."

"There must be some reason you and the other boys have gotten caught up with the x-wings."

Jess grows still and serious. "What if we're training?"

His tone takes me off guard. "For what?"

"The first order's started to inch towards our side of the galaxy," he breathes, "you never know when we'll need to protect our farms from all those white-armored monsters."

"Really?"

Jess takes a pause. Then he laughs.

I hit his arm playfully. "Jess! You had me convinced."

"I'm surprised," Jess sighs. "who would ever care about little Trikkan--" he mimics the tone of our childhood instruction droids-- "farming and fielding planet designed by the ancient ones for the most boring of the Galaxy's species?"

"Trikkan isn't boring," I scoff. "It has all sorts of secrets if you look beyond the surface."

"I know," Jess says, and this time I can tell he's truly sober. "I think you'd be blown away if we stepped off this planet for even a second. You've always been able to see things differently. You could make a difference where it counted."

Jess, my grounded and simple partner, has left me stilled in my spot. His words feel foreign, far more responsive to the wider universe than I've ever heard him.

He answers my stillness casually. "What have you got for tomorrow? I saw your notes on maneuvering in the lowlands."

I smile, and it comes through my voice. "Wake up early with me and you'll see."

"Absolutely, Mara."

Our breaths become even and the rain sings us to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

"Last one to the end of the field is an old shaak!" Jess screams, and I bolt after him, as fast as my legs can carry me. I'm only seven cycles into my little life, and Jess, the neighbor's boy, is the closest thing I have to a brother. We spend the hours we have away from our chores with the fields of mouraan--the shared crop of our families--as our own endless playground. Between the high, teal-blue stalks of the mourann, we are smugglers and Jedi and rulers of planetary systems. Most often, we are pilots, racing in our invisible crafts to one end of the field or the other.

"Wait up!" I shout, as Jess gets closer to our finish line.

He doesn't listen, and instead, crosses and cartwheels in a sign of victory.

"That's not how racing works," Jess says in a matter-of-fact manner. "I'm not gonna slow down because you're slower. If you wanna beat me, just get faster."

"But I'm a girl." I slow down, my feet squashing into the ground below with each momentum-filled step.

"So?" Jess plucks an ear of mouraan from its stalk, takes a big, juicy bite. "Doesn't mean you can't go fast."

He extends the mouraan to me and I shrug, roll my eyes and sit down beside him. We finish the ear together and Trikaan's star begins to set.

"I don't get why we have so much of this stuff," Jess sighs, looking around at the mouraan.

"Everyone eats it," I reply with an adult-like matter-of-factness. "We have to plant lots and lots to feed just this star system, let alone the whole galaxy."

I watch Jess try to understand. "'s still crazy to me that that, right there--" a gangly finger points to the stalk in front of us-- "Could feed somebody far away, like on Courescant or Jakku."

"I wish the mouraan could talk."

Jess giggles. "Why?"

"'Cause then we could tell it to say 'hi' to the people far away."

Jess stands on his gangly legs, shouts to the mouraan stalk--"Hey! Tell General Leia we said 'hi'!"

I like this game. I stand up, too. "Tell her we said, 'May the force be with you'!"

Jess howls at the sky, "May the force be with you!"

We sing those words into the stars until our mothers call us home.


	3. Chapter 3

Trikkan's star is still wrapped up below the horizon when Jess and I take our landspeeder out to the lowlands. The air is damp and smells of warm, fertile earth, and the first glimpses of this cycle's crops are just peeking through the soil. Mist plasters my hair to my face and turns it from a dry blonde to a wet, ashy brown. Jess wears a knit cap I'd made him the winter before, and smiles at me whenever he catches me watching him steer.

"Do you think anyone'll be there?" I ask over the hum of the landspeeder's engine.

"Race isn't 'till tonight," he replies. "I think we'll be safe."

I know he's right, but I can't help but feel uneasy. Since the first speeders and ships were brought to Trikkan, since before I can trace history, the females of the planet have been banned from using anything beyond maintenance droids and landspeeders for work. There is no piloting, no racing, and certainly no playing around with scraps from the rebellion, which is what Jess and the other males from neighboring fields have been doing since they were dug up a year ago.

It had come as a shock to all of us when Lim Kar-Tao bumped into them while searching the lowlands for a new spot to grow saltgrain, a white, mealy crop favored by the resistance and the first order alike for feeding large units of soldiers. The pair of rebellion-era x-wings and a singular tie fighter had slunk their way out of the fertile mud most likely in the same fashion that they'd disappeared. Within hours, men from neighboring farms has come to pull them onto solid ground while their partners watched from a distance.

It was apparent, once the ships were in full view, that they'd most likely landed on the planet for a parlay, an exchange, a rogue mission. Spies on either side must have been meeting, because there was no evidence that the crafts had crashed. Neither was evidence of bodies in cockpits. Little Trikkan was probably the perfect place for spies to hide.

Still, thirty-five years of mud preservation meant any chance of flying the ships first thing was shot. Men began scrambling to claim the ships, each citing their experience and their desire to fly. Some even argued that their ancestors had been rebels, and deserved the x-wings in their memory. In the end, however, Lim had the final say, and decided to pool resources from the others for all to share in the rebuilding and racing of the ships.

"Everyone needs a little bit of fun," he said, his almond eyes shining. The others agreed, and Lim nominated a reluctant Jess to repair an X-Wing. Jess had clearly taken care of his landspeeder better than the others, he said, and had even made intricate modifications that would take the skill needed to fix and man a ship so beyond our collective understanding.

Really, I'd done the landspeeder maintenance, but Jess didn't want to embarrass me and I was thankful. I was never one to buck the system; I only fixed the speeder so I could do something with my ever-busy hands.

It felt good to fix the X-Wing with Jess. We were still easing into life in our own compound, still getting to know each other as partners. We found a bank of manuals in the library near Trikkan's Port City, Anemo. Little by little, the mighty hunk of junk was polished and tweaked until it could lift off the ground. It still couldn't jump to hyperspeed (we needed an old droid model), but it could go pretty damn fast. Jess had gotten to be a fast and cunning pilot, and we made it almost a weekly occurrence to sneak out to the ships the dawn of the race and practice new techniques.

The lush fields suddenly disappear beneath us and the landscape takes a sharp drop-we've reached the lowlands, just below the cliffs on the edge of Lim's land. The cliffs are dotted with dark, dry caves-one of which houses the ships. We land on a rocky platform near it as the sun begins to peek above the deep green horizon and light the sprigs of saltgrain gold. The clouds are clearing to make way for dawn.

Jess and I hop out of the speeder and head into the cave, powering up the X-Wing, watching it's panels glow in the cave's hooded light. I hand Jess a battered helmet, the only one we could find that could reach from the old ship to my comlink, and he hoists himself into the cockpit.

I whisper into the comlink as the cockpit closes. "Just circle like normal."

He winks at me as the X-wing jolts off of the ground, and my heart jumps. The danger of it all, the alien nature of a ship from a time and place so far away stirs something in the pit of me that I can't place.

I have a memory as I watch Jess dodge around the track Lim and the others have made in the field-of my chubby childhood hands adjusting the comlink wire on my family's droid, bought used from the traders in Anemo. It was the first droid we'd ever owned that could link us to our neighbors, and the community was collectively dipping their toes in the waters of astromech droids with fear and trembling. I remember the sound of the droid's happy chittering when its comlink was finally usable again, the sound of Jess's boyhood voice, the first voice I tried to hear over the garbling transmission. The worried look of my mother, who called for my father, who slapped my wrist and told me to leave the fixing to him The galaxy, he said, was a dangerous place, and only the bravest of us could reach beyond our safe planet, where the soil bowed to us and we bowed to no one.

"How's that?" Jess asks me through the comlink, and I'm snapped back into my place at the mouth of the cave.

"A solid run." It takes me a moment to find my words again. "Do you remember last week's match?"

He scoffs. "I wish I could forget it."

He lands and I show him what I've drawn out on a pad I keep in my back pocket. "You're getting caught in these pockets between the other ships...they can pull ahead of you, cut across everyone else and win-"

"-which is what happened last week, and the week before-"

"-which is why you can't try pulling forward, and, as we learned the hard way, falling back and cutting around doesn't work. So what about...over?" I trace my finger along a looped line above a picture of our X-wing.

I can tell Jess is trying his best to take me seriously, but his first response is itching to jump off of his tongue.

I prompt him, playfully. "What?"

He shakes his head, and a dimple peeks out from an upturned corner of his mouth. "I know that this is against the rules, and I know that _you _know that, so I'm curious about what you mean by _over_."

"I'll show you."

My stomach churns as I reach out for the helmet, which has been propped against Jess's waist while we talk. He reaches for the comlink, and, as I hand it to him, he pulls me into a sloppy, loud, happy kiss. My fear melts. He pulls a streak of hair from my face and places the helmet on my head himself, hoisting me up into the cockpit of the X-wing and smacking my butt as I make my way into place.

In seconds, I'm flying, faster than any land speeder, looping around the lowlands along a track through the saltgrain that wraps around jutting boulders and tumbling streams. Man-made obstacles have been set-up, too, early First Order posters with Snoke's eyes blacked-out, scarecrows made to resemble resistance fighters with "May The Force Be With You" signs on their chests. The first time I'd been in the cockpit the rush of the air, the hum of the engine, the focused view throughout the helmet disoriented me. By now, I have come to love the noisy, focused solemnity of our X-wing.

I round one of the cliffs and come back into view of the starting and finishing line, buzzing Jess over the comlink.

"When they pull up beside you, you'll increase altitude ever so slightly, like this-"

I let the X-Wing rise as it pummels towards the finish line. "Then, you'll-"

I let adrenaline take over, because without it's guidance, I'll freeze. A jolt of the handles to the left and all of a sudden, the dense, wet ground is the sky and the sky is hidden under the metal belly of the ship. Then all is right again, the X-Wing corkscrewed back into the same place it started, only meters to the left, but clearly out of its area. I hear Jess exclaim on the other end of the line, and a laugh bubbles out of my churning stomach.

"You're crazy!" Him voice sounds as breathless as I feel.

I land the X-Wing, trying to conceal how hardly my knees are knocking together as I hop out.

"I don't think I'm any crazier than anyone out there." I nod to the heavens. "It just makes sense."


	4. Chapter 4

_HELLO ALL! _

_Thanks for sticking with the story so far. I'm doing my best to keep posting on a semi-regular basis, so if this weekly to bi-weekly schedule is okay for you, let me know! It's been great to see so many of you stopping by. If there are things you're loving or questions you have, share 'em in the comments below! I try to respond as soon as I see 'em. I look forward to getting to know y'all during this process!_

_May The Force Be With You,_

_**R**_

By the time the others show up for the race, Jess has figured out how to pull off our new move. He's innocently polishing the wings of the ship while I lay blankets near the starting line for the spectators. As each couple lands their speeders, we begin to congregate around the mouth of the cave.

A flash of wild copper hair-Jess's sister, Mell-bolts towards me. Her partner, Nix, with his dark hair and skin and deep set eyes, is right behind her. They've only been sharing a compound for a few weeks, and even though we're only a few cycles ahead of them, that sweet first period of Jess and I's partnership feels a millenia away. What was bright and new has become well-worn and comforting, what was all nerves and stardust has become as familiar as the fertile ground beneath our feet. Jess and I fly together, yet our hearts are firmly planted in the ground of our home planet.

Mell is all brightness and laughter and tumbling headfirst towards life. She spins me around, taller than I am, built long and athletic like her brother. "Mara!" She shouts. "Ready to watch our men go head to head?"

"Ready to watch mine win," I reply jokingly.

Mell jestures to Jess. "This guy? I think he has a better future as a protocol droid than as a pilot."

Jess laughs, his violet eyes shining, and he captures his sister with his arms, messing with her hair. "You talk an awful big game for a girl whose droid once called her its closest companion."

Mell playfully elbows her brother, and he lets her go. She shrugs and smiles at me. "Who am I kidding? Droids make the best friends."

"And what am I? Shaak meat?" Nix chimes from behind his partner. Mell rolls her eyes and sweeps Nix close to herself, kissing him on the cheek.

A bell rings, and Nix and Jess bound toward one of the ships, mounted by Lim, who's become an unofficial emcee for the games. He's one of the oldest among our group of young farmers, not yet greying but in the twilight of his youth. His partner, Jael, steps up beside me, their dark-haired daughter napping in her arms.

"Alright, gentlemen," Lim bellows, "We all know the rules. Three laps around the track, first across the line, wins. No canons, no excessive contact, and even though I know it's impossible, no lightspeed. Standings of last week's races put Tass, Jo-Bal and Gravian in the next race."

My heart jumps and I meet eyes with Jess as he pivots towards the X-Wing. What if something goes wrong, and he slams into a boulder-or worse-one of the other ships? What if Lim and the others start asking too many questions about how we-how _he_-figured it out?

I take a breath. There chances of Jess using the new techniques in the race are slim, still, there's a reason we-_he_-learned them.

"Off to chase them down?" Jael asks, snapping me out of the storm in my head.

"I prefer to watch the first few from here," I say, after a laugh. "Everyone else gets so excited, and by the third or fourth race, there's more space to steer a landspeeder."

"It's the little ones," Jael says, stroking her daughter's hair, "They have the attention span of a ship at hyperspeed." I watch her dark eyes search mine. "When will it be time for you and Jess to...make your homestead bigger?"

Something catches in my throat, but I smile at Jael and the race begins, mercifully, with the penetrating noise of the ships as they dart into the distance. Partners and little brothers and children go buzzing towards them in landspeeders far too small and slow to catch up for long, but with an excitement to see their favorite racer pull out a win. The air, a flurry of noise as air tosses around us, suddenly stills when the racers round a boulder and become distant on the horizon.

Jess wins the first race with ease, as it was made up of the lowest scorers from the week prior. The second race is won with a little more cunning, as he dips to the side of the lone tie fighter and goes vertical with his ship along the edge of a boulder before pulling into first and winning a surprising victory. By the time the sun has begun to set, many of the families have made their way home that couldn't keep their eyes on the events-but a strong band still remains, waiting breathlessly for the final round of races.

I am sharing the last bits of a packed lunch of spicy steamed mouraan over saltgrain with Mell when Lim makes a loud, warm call to the remaining racers-Jess, an older racer and civil war vet named Carth, and Gor-menn Teil, one of the handful of men who raced the tie fighter and a tough competitor. Gor-menn is dangerously tall, a Duros with emerald green skin and large, red eyes. His family settled on Trikkan before I was born, refugees of Imperial takeover who kept to themselves. He is tough and smart and has yet to lose a race.

Jess turns to me, waves, and bounds towards his ship. I can tell he's excited, ready to win. Mell makes a sisterly comment that hints at her confidence in her brother though it sounds dismissive. I hold my breath.

The race begins, and the three ships are off, faster than any landspeeder could achieve even at its highest speed. Mell nudges me as I watch the the trio disappear into the twinkling darkness of the saltgrain fields.

"C'mon, Mara." She hops onto her feet and strides towards our landspeeder. "Let's see sweet Jess take down these guys."

I linger behind her, but eventually catch up. She gets in the passenger seat before I can.

"You drive. You can keep up."

I slink into the pilot's seat, aware that seeming too comfortable with a landspeeder can make me look like a dangerous woman. There's a constant thread in conversations among partners at the races that we _only_ use the speeders in _emergencies_. Mell proudly announces that she flies hers every day. I don't usually say anything.

"I think we're too far behind."

Mell laughs. "No, you don't."

No, I don't. I know that lingering just draws attention, so I suck in air and punch it.

We're going the opposite direction of the course, starting at the finish line and looking for lights beyond our own headlights. Wild insects dance up from the saltgrain as we run over their home, letting out tinny, scratching calls. The wind whips our hair back and forth, copper curls and blond streaks dancing around our heads. And then, there they are, three twinkling sets of wings on the horizon, and I'm slowing down. Jess seems to only be paces ahead of Carth, but Gor-menn has positioned himself parallel to both, free of the x-wing fray and creeping towards first place.

I begin to breathe again, slowing down the speeder as they draw nearer. I can see a cadre of landspeeders behind them, watching, and know that it's time to turn around. The ships are going faster now, dangerously fast.

"Hurry up or we're gonna miss 'em!" Mell shouts.

"We won't be able to see them anyways!" I shout back.

"Like death we will. C'mon, Mara." She says this as though she's reading my own thoughts. I let out a laugh that is one part nerves and another part amazement. And then I hit reverse.

We're flying backwards through blackness now, eyes locked on Jess, Carth, and Gor-menn, the three ships locked with Jess now trapped in the middle. In between glances behind me, I watch for Jess to move forward. To do something. To do what I don't need or want to do but what comes so naturally. To fly.

We've backed into a free space near the finish line and I pull the landspeeder to a stop. Mell is screaming Jess's name. I start to scream, too. The crowd of farmers and fielders, wrapped up in the final moments of the final race of the season, joins in a dissonant, noisy, living chorus, shouting the names of their heroes.

It's in this moment that Jess clicks skyward, pivots the x-wing, circles around the fray and pulls into first.

The people of the landlocked planet lose their minds. They've never seen anything like this moment, and as the racers lower their ships to the natural platform, fielders swarm Jess with delighted screams. Mell and Nix are flailing towards their brother, Mell a head taller than the other girls and able to reach across and knock him on the shoulder. Lim is laughing, passing mauraanian ale to the losers. Carth is shaking his head and laughing, too. Gor-menn is quiet, his red eyes watching the scene unfold in silence.

We drink ourselves silly, Jess and I barely able to exchange a few words before getting swept up into the lively stories of this group or that around this fire or that. There's dancing. There's music. Those who don't have partners dance with their droids.

Eventually, the groups thin and a dozen or so lingering celebrants congregate around the last lit fire. Mell pours drinks while Nix jokes with Lim, who is huddled close to Jael. I sit on the ground, head against Jess's warm, beating chest. Carth is beside us, grumpy and happy all at once. We take a collective breath and find brief, gentle silence.

"Imagine flying one of those for real," Mell says, lifting her eyebrows at Nix, "in the Resistance."

"Fat chance," Nix coughs. "Betcha can do more than just imagine, huh, Carth?"

The vet shakes his head. "I flew for the rebellion," He sighs, "But only recon. Never saw much action on this side of the galaxy. Probably never will."

"Never say never," Lim pipes up. His almond eyes speak to a quiet inner darkness. A foreboding. "There were a few planets in the Hosnian system that thought the same."

My stomach churns. _The Hosnian System. _Millions, billions gone in a breath. It had only been a few days since word reached through the traders that The First Order's shiny new weapon had taken out entire sets of planets. We'd stopped work that day. We'd almost cancelled the races. But Lim had halfheartedly suggested forgetting the pain and celebrating what we could see. And it had worked. Until now.

Jael scolds Lim for bringing up the tragedy and offers the last of the mauraanian ale. No one takes it-except for Gor-menn, who has been lingering on the edge of the group without our noticing.

"Talked to the traders today on the way out from Anemo." His voice is low, scratchy, like it's uncomfortable being used. "The First Order's weapon is gone."

The air hums. "Gone?" Jael asks breathlessly. "Gone how?"

"A team of Resistance fighters took it out from the inside."

Carth chuckles. "Must've been Leia's idea. She's seen a thing or two and knows how to take out those pesky machines."

Jael, surprisingly, hasn't swayed to laugh with Carth. She keeps her eyes locked on Gor-menn's. "What does that mean?"

The Duros shakes his head, but something in his eyes is knowing. "Don't know, madam. Just know it's still not over."

Jess and I stumble into the homestead while our Star rises and the moons fade. We are still slightly drunk, alive enough to be aware of the presence of our bed and one another. I'm dizzy, trying to catch my balance even as I lay beneath our furs.

"Mara."

I turn myself warily to face Jess, who is already turned to face me. He's shirtless, pantsless-oh, Maker, I can feel all of him against me. I am happily aware of what he wants and what I want. I lean in for his lips, but I feel his hands cup my face and hold me a few inches from him. His violet eyes meet mine.

"I know ya never wanna leave here." His soft voice is slurred and stirred by the ale that lines his breath.

"Do you?"

"No," he smiles, "No."

I nuzzle his nose with mine. My champion. My friend.

"'f either of us could," he hums into my hair, "It'd be you. 'd wan itta be you."

I pull away for a brief moment. "What?"

"You're smart, Mara," he says, "An' brave, an' strong. The galaxy needs you, Mara. They need you t' be who you were made t' be.


	5. Chapter 5

_A mini chapter for ya. They'll be short and sweet for a little while so LOOK OUT._

**_R_**

"Stop looking at yourself so much."

Jess tosses a pebble into the water trough for the shaaks in the pen outside my family's homestead. Our droid R8-A4 blips and beeps, annoyed by the splash of water it received. I blush, grabbing at my braids. I'm getting close to seeing my 12th cycle, painfully aware of everything about myself.

"I wasn't looking," I protest weakly, "I was...checking to see if the shaaks needed watering."

"Sure ya were." Jess reaches for a barrel of shaak feed to fill up their feeding trough, but I stop him.

"Don't use all of that."

"Why not?" Lanky Jess is in between sizes, too tall for his trousers and too small for his tunic. His hand disappears and it looks like his arm is attached to the feed barrel. If I weren't so embarrassed of myself, I would laugh at him.

I reach for a bag I've been hiding under the water trough. Inside is a collection of ireroots, fat, tube-like vegetables that I've been growing in a box garden on the edge of our field.

"Where'd you get those?" Jess drops the barrel with a _thud_ and takes a root in his hand. Our fingers brush and I snap my hand away, suddenly nervous for no reason at all.

"I grew them."

Jess whips his head around on his long neck. "Where?"

"Not here." I set the ireroots in the trough. "Grab and handful of feed and mix it in."

My mother walks into the yard to fetch our droid, and eyes me. New things make her scared, and I start getting antsy at the thought of her catching us feeding the shaaks ireroot. I slam handfuls of feed before the shaaks, who are now crowded around the troughs and waiting. Jess follows.

"What does it help with?"

"Um…" I wait until she's back inside.

"Mara?"

"Sorry." I exhale. "It gives them more energy. More salt in their meat, I guess, and sugar in their milk, when you milk them."

I pull a book from a hiding place between my trousers and my skirt. It's little, stuffed with stray pieces of paper and tattered.

"Got it from an herb grower on trading day in Anemo." I smile to myself, remembering the old twil'ek's kind eyes.

"Why?"

"She said she thought I had enough balance to use it. Whatever that means." I thumb through the pages, descriptions of growing methods for everything from cash crops like mouraan to the rarest of herbs from the other side of the Galaxy. I hand the book over to a curious Jess, who does the same.

"Balance," he says, "Like the Force?"

"I dunno." I shrug, and reach for the book, Jess playfully whipping it out of my reach. "_Jess_!" I chase him around the yard, the shaaks braying. He stops abruptly, and I slam into him, falling back into the mud. He laughs.

"Not fair," I whine.

He offers a hand. "Just messing with ya, Mara."

I take it. "You're crazy, Jess Gravian." I try to comb the mud out of my braids self-consciously.

He tugs on one of them, gently, presses the book into my chest. "I don't think I'm any crazier than you."


End file.
